A delightfully offbeat book with unexpectedly profound overtones ... Mr. Quinones’s writing is clear and brisk. His 42 chapters, the longest of them 18 pages, are sometimes organized to tell a larger story ... But perhaps the best reason to read The Perfect Tuba is for Mr. Quinones’s winning point of view.
Add the tuba to the list of book subjects you probably thought you didn’t care about but that is suddenly compelling as heck ... Packed with intriguing factoids ... A veteran journalist, Quinones is a terrific reporter, who seems to have interviewed everyone who ever picked up a tuba or sousaphone. That meticulousness is the only way a book gets all of those totally tubular nuggets ... It’s possibly Quinones is too thorough, in fact ... There are a lot of people discussed in The Perfect Tuba...and the book’s non-chronological structure makes it hard to keep them straight ... But would I want him to edit out any of that stuff? I would not. As he goes deeper into the motivations of tuba players and the joys of participating in a band or symphony — in which a group of individuals create collective beauty — it becomes clear that The Perfect Tuba is about a lot more than a brass instrument that takes up the entire back seat of most automobiles.
Fascinating, often moving ... The author...build[s] delicious suspense as he chronicles daring efforts to replicate the horns ... He immerses readers in an engrossing, inspiring multiyear 'high school band arms race' in tiny Roma, Texas ... The Perfect Tuba will prompt readers to cheer ... Mission harmoniously, joyfully accomplished.
